A Dog is for Life
by SamCyberCat
Summary: While spring cleaning Layton's study, Rosa finds a long forgotten robot dog and decides that it's time for the little fellow to find a new home.


Notes – I put up a poll a while back on asking while animal or inanimate object people would like to see me write a fic about and the robot dog from Professor Layton won out. So here is the promised fic. It's set sometime after the third game, with some vague spoilers for the first, third and fourth games. Also, I've gone with the common fan name of Gizmo that I've seen used for the robot dog a fair bit.

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><p>When Layton and Luke had returned from their trip to solve "an inheritance dispute" for the Reinhold family, they had a great many stories to tell Rosa about their adventure. First and foremost being why Layton had returned with a young girl called Flora, whom he was insisting of adopting as his daughter. Since underneath all of that calm and calculation, Rosa knew that Layton could be quite reckless in his choices, at least when doing the right thing was concerned; she didn't argue the point beyond a quick scolding for him not planning far enough ahead to consider all of the details that have a daughter led to.<p>

Quite further back in the tales of what happened at St. Mystere was the story of a little robotic dog. In all the excitement of Flora joining the household, this fellow had been quite overlooked until Rosa had retrieved him from the suitcase, with a look of surprise on her face to find anything so unusual there.

"Luke, do you know what this is?" she'd asked, carrying the yapping contraption through to where the others were.

"Oh, that's Gizmo," Luke told her, "The Professah and I made 'im from old parts and a sheets of instructions we got at St. Mystere. He's a great dog, really good at findin' 'int coins."

"How very nice," Rosa laughed, putting the other newest addition to the family down on the floor, where he sat quietly in the lack of any hint coins to find, watching them.

Gizmo's talent was certainly one that would prove very helpful to the Professor and his young apprentice in theory, Rosa knew, but that was not how it worked out in practise.

Layton's main flaw was that he was a rather forgetful person. So as potentially useful as the dog's ability was, most of the time Layton just didn't remember to take him out with him. Magnified by the fact that he often didn't know when adventure was going to find him – a trip to visit his old mentor Dr. Schrader, for example, had resulted in a murder mystery that led him all the way to a mysterious village out in the country, called Folsense.

"It would have been handy if you'd had someone who could find hint coins for you, what with visiting all these new places," Rosa had said, once he'd got back.

"We ended up not having to worry about that," Layton said, "As odd as it might sound, Luke and I agreed to look after a hamster on behalf of a chef for a while. We've given him back now, but the little fellow proved to be quite apt in the art of sniffing hint coins out once we got him back into shape."

It seemed that wherever Layton and Luke went they somehow managed to find some sort of creature with a talent for finding hint coins by chance. After the hamster came a parrot, and if Rosa remembered rightly they'd somehow trained a fish to do the same thing back in Misthallery, and who knew what other animals they'd used to help them track down the hidden coins.

Poor Gizmo remained quite forgotten, even by Rosa, right up until one day when she was cleaning out one of the cupboards in Layton's study.

The study was a mess at the best of times, magnified by Luke leaving – since he had always been the one to very insistently keep Layton's office clean. Once Luke was gone, Rosa reluctantly had to bring herself to clean out the office on her own. It was a mammoth task, as the room was filled with little trinkets from Layton's travels that had been shoved onto the first available surface. He was the sort of man who would put a rock on an unused part of the floor, then turn around and say that rock had been very important and he now couldn't find it upon you moving it to a more sensible storage place than the floor sometime later.

It had taken many days for Rosa to even get the study clean enough to even tackle the cupboard at all. And she couldn't say she was surprised to find that it was filled to the bursting point with junk. Some of it fell to the floor as she opened the door.

After a while of filtering through 'junk that Layton would probably care about if it went missing' and 'junk that he probably wouldn't notice if she threw it away', Rosa eventually caught sight of something red, silver and rather dusty near the back of the cupboard.

With some effort, she managed to pull out the robotic dog. Its eyes were shut, as it had clearly been turned offline sometime ago. Though Rosa knew that it was essentially just a toy and had no feelings towards whether it was in use or not, the sight was still quite a sad one for her.

She didn't know who had ultimately put Gizmo away in a cupboard like that and frankly she wasn't going to ask. She had a suspicion that it might have been Layton, since the man had developed a tendency to shut away anything that reminded him of Luke after the boy had left, whether he admitted to it or not, but that was beside the point.

The point was that at the end of the day Rosa had found herself left with this toy or pet or whatever the dog was regarded as, that clearly wasn't been cared for by it's owners anymore. And while she could probably present her finding to Layton, in all likelihood the only thing that would happen would be that it would remind him of the days gone by, he'd make some vague promise to keep the robot in use, let Flora play with Gizmo for a while, then eventually put him back in the cupboard when they both got bored of him again.

No. Rosa knew from experience that when a child grows out of a toy you give that toy to another child that will appreciate it more. Layton was essentially like a grown up child in this regard and she would treat the situation as such.

So without a word to Layton himself about her findings, she took a short leave of absence, packed Gizmo away and went to a place that she had only but heard of before.

Misthallery.

A little town the Professor had talked about a lot. Luke, another child that Layton had one day brought home with him on a whim, had come from here. It was, for a long time, the home of Layton's old college friend and Luke's father, Clark Triton. As well as being the first place that she could remember Layton saying that he had been attacked by his old foe Descole.

Among the things that Layton had told Rosa in passing about Misthallery was the large population of children there. There were the Barde siblings, Arianna and Tony, who had been at the heart of the mystery Layton had solved there, an organised group of children who referred to themselves as the Black Ravens, and many others besides.

If Rosa was going to find a new home for Gizmo, then this was the right place to look.

And sure enough, upon her arrival she was almost instantly greeted by a pair of children, who she soon learned to be siblings, called Wren and Socket.

"Nice to meet you, Miss. We don't get many visitors here at this time of year," the boy, Socket, had said.

"Yes, well, I'm a friend of Professor Layton, here on his behalf," she told them.

"Professor Layton?" they echoed, eyes lighting up. Clearly this had bee the right thing to say to them.

"Indeed," Rosa laughed, "And as strange as this might sound, I have a present for which ever children in Misthallery can best look after it."

"That'll be us, the Black Ravens," Socket replied, proudly.

"Just give us a minute," his sister, Wren, added.

The two of them darted off and soon returned with a bunch of children who may well have been in hiding somewhere near, for the speed they arrived. She couldn't tell if they were all members of the famed Black Ravens or not, but what she could definitely say was that she came in all shapes and sized.

The one who looked most like their leader, a tall boy in a dark blue cap, who carried himself with an air of confidence, stepped forward; "My friends tell me that you've been sent by Professor Layton with a present for the Black Ravens."

This was not actually true, as Rosa had not sought out Layton's permission to bring Gizmo here, but she played into it anyway.

"I am a friend of the Professor's, yes, and I do have a present for whichever children in this town could care for it best," she said.

"You're lucky we found you then. I am Crow and these are my Ravens. We are… very well versed in caring for precious objects," the boy replied.

"I hope that to be the case, young man, because this poor little guy has been neglected for quite some time," Rosa commented, reaching down to lift Gizmo out of her bag.

She could see the looks of intrigue on the children's faces at the sight of the robot dog. They'd clearly never seen anything like it and wanted to have a closer look. Several of them did, creeping forward from the group.

Crow raised an eyebrow; "Professor Layton sent us a toy dog?"

"You don't have to take it if you don't want it," Rosa retorted.

"Please can we keep him, Crow?" one of the kids chimed, "He looks like a lot of fun."

The impression that Rosa got from the boy called Crow was that he was the sort of person who would much rather work on something practical than stop to play, but at the same time wanted what was best for his friends.

"Very well," Crow sighed, shaking his head.

"Thanks, Crow, you're the best," another one of the group chimed, as they all surged forward for a closer look.

"His name is Gizmo," Rosa informed them, "Though I should imagine he wouldn't object too much if you wanted to change his name. There's a little on-and-off switch just there that you can activate him with. He doesn't do much more than yap and run around, a bit like a real dog, but he has a talent for finding any hint coins that might be about."

"Hint coins? I think your Professor cleared the whole town out of those the last time he was here," Crow chuckled, as the other members of his gang flicked the switch and laughed in delight as Gizmo whirred to life, barking at them, "But all the same, the Black Ravens will take good care of this little guy. Tell him that we appreciate his gift."

"I'll pass on the message," Rosa agreed, closing her suitcase, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of work to get back to."

She bid herself farewell, watching just for a moment as the joyful children played with the little dog. She would miss Gizmo a bit, but knew that he was better off with people who would look after him and not forget about him. And perhaps when these children got older and didn't care for toys anymore they'd pass him onto their children too. Rosa very much hoped that would be the cycle his life would take. It was best for him.

Once she returned to Layton's home in London, she found the Professor stood in his study with that vaguely confused look he had about his face he always had after she had recently cleaned any of the rooms.

"Rosa, is something missing from here?" he asked, as she walked through the door.

Putting down her suitcase, she answered, "I did do a bit of spring cleaning, yes."

"And you… threw things away?" he inquired, wincing at the thought.

"Only things that I knew you wouldn't use anymore, Professor," she tutted, "And I also found a new home for one thing."

"Not the charity shops," Layton gasped, after having been victim on more than one occasion of Rosa sending his old belongings off there.

"Not this time, though there is nothing wrong with giving something you don't need away to a good cause," Rosa replied, sternly, "I'll have you know that I took that robot dog of yours to that Misthallery place you're always talking about and the children there very much appreciated the gift."

"Gizmo? But he was my… my dog. You had no right to take him without asking," Layton muttered.

Shaking her head, Rosa said, "Seemed to me like he was just sitting in a cupboard gathering dust. That dog was made to be treated like a pet or a toy or whatever you saw it as and I can't say that you were bothering with him very much at all."

"I suppose not…" admitted Layton, looking away.

Softening a little Rosa reasoned, "He'll be much happier there and if you really want to you could always go visit him."

"Yes, you're right," mumbled Layton, still not meeting her eyes.

This was another 'that reminded me of Luke and I'm not sure how to deal with the lack of it even if I had hidden it away on my own accord' moment and Rosa was never certain how to deal with those.

"You can talk about it if you want," she offered.

"No, I'm just being silly," Layton sighed, "If you'll excuse me I've got a lot of work to do."

He turned to leave in a hurry.

"That Crow boy said thanks on behalf of the Black Ravens," Rosa called after his retreating figure.

This made Layton stop for a moment and though he didn't look back at her, his tone changed to a much more positive one; "I'm… happy to hear that Gizmo is in their hands. They're a nice bunch. I just hope they don't reprogram him to find money instead of hint coins or we'll all be in trouble."

And with that he was gone.

Having faced the result of her actions, Rosa simply got back to her cleaning. She knew that sometimes sweeping out the old could be hard, but often it was the only way to move on.

Slowly but surely, she was helping the Professor to move on from his losses.


End file.
